Chelsea Farmer's Supply

In 1987, Greg Raye suggested that Chelsea Farmer’s Supply be torn down. Two years later he and
his wife, H. K. Leonard, bought the building to keep it from being turned into a parking lot. “I
had no desire to run a business,” explains Raye. But today he and Leonard are still running
it.

Built about 1855, Farmer’s Supply is one of the oldest buildings in Chelsea. A classic Greek
Revival structure with a low roof and gable returns, it originally faced Main Street. It looks as
though it had been built as a residence, but at some point it became Chelsea’s first hotel, the
Chelsea House. In 1888 the Chelsea House moved into a new, brick building, and the old building was
moved to its present location at 122 Jackson. There a woman named Line Downer and several subsequent
owners operated it as a residence hotel for ¬thirty-seven more years, renting rooms to railroad
employees and workers at the nearby Glazier stove plant.
In 1925 the building was remodeled as a feed mill. An awning was put on the front and a one-story
wing added on the west. At the time most local farmers raised cattle and brought their pickup trucks
to the mill to get their grain ground into feed. Ransom Lewis owned the mill until 1936, and for the
next eight years it was run by Vincent Ives.

In 1946 Anton Nielsen, a forty-year-old Danish immigrant, bought the store. He ran it for the
next forty-five years. Nielsen’s father was a farmer who became a hotel operator. When he was
twelve, Nielsen started an apprenticeship to be a clerk; later he went to business school. At age
eighteen he emigrated to Canada and did farm work. Two years later he moved to Detroit and worked in
an automobile factory and then a paint factory. At a dance in Detroit he met his future wife,
Dorothy.
Nielsen served on the Chelsea Village Council and was elected village president four times. For
several years he headed the community fair, and he was active in the local Kiwanis Club. He enjoyed
vegetable and flower gardening and the many cats who made their home in his store.

Longtime employee Allen Broesamle was devoted to the store and often ran it when Nielsen was ill
or traveling. Broesamle’s widow, Ruth, says her husband never wanted a title or ownership, even
though Nielsen offered to sell him the place.
Allen Broesamle grew up on a farm in Sylvan Township. His younger brother, Roy, says Nielsen
originally offered the job to whichever boy wanted it. Roy chose farming but helped in the store
when needed.

When Nielsen bought the store, the main business was the feed mill operation. “Some days he’d
start the grinder at seven and never shut it off all day,” Roy Broesamle recalls. “Farmers were
lined up all day.” The store made most of its money selling feed additives, such as salt,
minerals, and vitamins. Current Farmer’s Supply employee Jeff Weber says Nielsen sold everything
from an office in the front: “You’d tell him what you wanted, and he’d go and get it.”

Ruth Broesamle remembers that her husband greased the grinder daily and repaired it often. “The
equipment was old, and it was hard to find parts,” she recalls. Each type of feed presented its
own challenges. “Hog feed was not a fine grind. It gets into everything,” she says. Weber
remembers coming in with his grandfather in the 1960s. “Grandfather would bring in corn or
wheat,” he says. “In half an hour he’d be back at the farm.”

By the 1970s many farmers had moved away from the livestock business, while others had begun to
grind their own crops or had switched to commercial feed. Farmers who diversified and needed smaller
amounts of lots of things became Nielsen’s customer base. Nielsen began selling more supplies such
as seeds and fertilizer, and he branched out into nonfarm items such as pet food. To make more room
for the additional inventory, he and Allen Broesamle built a lean-to on the back of the building,
using lumber from a former railroad freight house that stood where Heydlauff’s parking lot now
is.

The wider inventory necessitated more trips to pick up and deliver supplies. Broesamle drove all
over southern Michigan for seed corn, feed, fertilizer, and other items, and he made deliveries to
farmers as far away as Northville and Plymouth.

When Nielsen was eighty-five, he sold the store. Broesamle stayed to help Greg Raye with the
transition but retired after the first summer. Nielsen died in 2001 at age ninety-six.

In his 1987 University of Michigan master’s thesis in architecture, Raye had outlined a plan to
turn the area around the Chelsea railroad depot into a pedestrian mall. His wife’s parents, Walter
and Helen May Leonard, published the Chelsea Standard and Dexter Leader in the Welfare Building just
across the tracks from Farmer’s Supply. Once a bustling commercial center, it became a largely
ignored area when passenger trains no longer stopped in Chelsea. Raye suggested that the Farmer’s
Supply be replaced with a new building to be used for retail.
But when nearby Longworth Plating eyed the store for a parking lot, Raye stepped in and bought it.
Contrary to his original intent, Raye became not only the rescuer of the Farmer’s Supply but also
its proprietor. He and his wife have tried to keep the store much the way it was when Nielsen ran
it, complete with rough-hewn studs in the walls and air bubbles in the old windows. They’ve
retained most of the decor too, keeping the metal signs and the blue ribbons that come with cattle
bought at auction at the community fair. The biggest change they’ve made is opening up the
lean-to, which had been used only for inventory storage, as sales space.

When Raye and Leonard first bought the store, they continued to run the feed mill. But “it made
the whole building shake,” Raye recalls. “It was loud and dusty. The neighbors didn’t like
it.” When it broke and they couldn’t get replacement parts, they stopped operating it. They’ve
kept what’s left—gears, bins, belt drives—as artifacts.

Raye and Leonard have expanded the stock too. They still serve commercial farmers, but their
customers also include hobby farmers and gardeners. An animal lover, Raye has vastly expanded the
pet supply department, and he caters to serious bird-¬watchers. Chelsea Farmer’s Supply also
sells locally made products such as honey and maple syrup.

Fresh eggs brought in by Allen Broesamle were a staple during the Nielsen years. The new owners
have carried on that tradition: now Roy Broesamle supplies them.

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